It’s symbolic that Dan Richards, California’s embattled Fish and Game commissioner for killing a mountain lion during a legal hunt in Idaho, has five of his father’s antique muzzleloaders on a wall in his well-appointed real estate office in Ontario.

Stacked horizontally, each gun represents something to Richards, like the one his teenage son, Drew, was given before he was tragically killed in a car accident. Adjacent to that gun wall, there’s a hand-stitched, 1863 American flag with 35 stars. Beneath the flag is another relic from the Civil War, a cannonball.

“Growing up in West Virginia, I’ve been to every Civil War battle site there and a ton in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland,” Richards, 59, said in an interview this week in his office. “That’s what we did. We didn’t have any money, so for a weekend getaway, we’d go to a Civil War site, and they’d have a display or a re-enactment.”

The flag is symbolic, too. It represents the 35th state, West Virginia, a state with resource-rich ground that produces coal by the train load and turned out Mountaineers like Richards, all-time NBA great Jerry West and football coaching legend Lou Holtz. Richards has an NBA basketball signed by West and a football signed by Holtz in his office that also features the first banded drake mallard Richards ever shot.

Those who know Richards well, and even some who don’t, realize he is far too bright an individual to have ignited such a polarizing issue as the mountain lion in California, where it’s protected, without a design and a plan. Richards insists he did not wish to create a deep divide on the issue, but he has done just that. State Democrats, animal-rights groups and anti-hunting groups have called for his resignation for what they deemed poor judgment in sending a photo to a hunting and fishing publication showing him smiling and bear-hugging the cougar he shot in Idaho. In addition to a possible vote on his ouster next week in the state Assembly, there’s an ethics charge that he improperly accepted a gift, the cougar hunt, that was more than the allowed $420 state officials may take each year.

True to form, Richards is not blinking and is sticking to his guns.

“Let’s be clear on the photo,” he said. “I submitted that photo to Western Outdoor News to share with the sporting community. The Humane Society of the United States took the photo and spread it across the country, not me. The Humane Society of the United States’ executive director called for my resignation. I’m not out there to change Prop 117. I’m not out there to shoot mountain lions in California. I didn’t bring this.

“All this smacks of Big Brother to me. We live in a democracy. There are laws we’re all expected to follow. I’m a big believer in that. My tenure on the commission has consistently shown me to be for maximum penalties for poachers.”

Growing up in the Mountaineer State, Richards went from firing a BB gun to a .22 quickly, he said, and then onto shotguns and rifles. He hunted with family and friends. Their favorite place was a magical plateau, Dolly Sods Wilderness, a game-rich area in Eastern West Virginia. He hunted squirrels and rabbits with his sportsman father, a man Richards says walks as quietly and stealthily as a ghost in the woods.

Richards played halfback for his high school team that ran the T-formation. A photo of that unit also graces his office wall. Richards can recite what each player did after high school. Most are successful professionals like him.

“That’s where I came from,” Richards said. “We walked along railroad tracks and chewed tobacco. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we were happy. We had clean clothes and food on the table. Most of the kids I grew up with were sportsmen and had guns.

“We had an idyllic childhood. We’d throw a handful of shells into our pockets, go out into the woods, and we were the great white hunters. Those were the first conservationists I met.”

Richards said he will not resign. He plans on being at the March 7 meeting of the Fish and Game Commission at the Riverside Mission Inn, his first as president. He’s aware there likely will be protesters present. But he’s buoyed by the groundswell of support he’s received from fishermen and hunters and others who believe the state Legislature is wasting valuable time on this issue. The National Rifle Association and the American Sportfishing Association have stepped up to support Richards.

“There’s zero resignation in me,” Richards said. “That’s not who I am.”